


To Keep Warm In the Cold

by 13letters



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Future and Memories, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 22:55:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4540578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Stupid," she mutters, but not for the first or last time before she walks off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Keep Warm In the Cold

He laid her onto his cloak, warm and frozen against the bitter snow.

She moaned into his mouth, kissed him with the words _hurry up already_ since she was frozen, since he spent the better part of a minute devouring her with his eyes, dark and enraptured as he took in her spread thighs, her dark thatch of hair, her pink skin cold and bare under him.

He laughed, and it wasn't a rare sound, but her heart melted, her eyes softened, and she was the Arya only he could see in those flickers of passionate and intimate and raw moments.

"I love you," she whispered breathless. She still made it sound like a challenge somehow, and perhaps it was -- they could freeze, they could be killed come morning, they could maybe just come out of this war-torn depression holding hands and clinging to each other beneath the Stark grey skies.

They could do it, he believed it, so he murmured it back into her hair, into her neck, against her breasts as he curled his fingers inside her. She was so warm, grasping at his bare, sweaty shoulders, his thick ebon hair, her cloak drawn around them, whimpering when he let himself kiss her with his eyes closed.

"Arya," he said, grunting when she moved her hips with his, hooked her legs around his back. "Arya."

"Gendry," she cried out, like a howl like a wolf, like the wind fierce above where they were secluded into each other.

Feverish and desperate and longing, he buried himself into her wet warmth again and again, her teeth at his neck heightening the familiar burn of friction that had them together as often as they could. His name on her swollen mouth was his undoing with hers, and his hips buckled as he poured all of himself into her with a breathy grunt, her piercing shriek joining him in her melt to release.

"We need to get back," she breathed after moments of their panting silence, his fingers featherlight over her ribs. "They'll wonder where we are."

They all likely knew, the Crows and Brienne of Tarth and the Kingslayer and the rest of the North and Northmost above the Wall, the dragon, too, but she didn't make to move away from the heated press of his skin burning against hers in the security that was always Gendry, so he didn't move either.

\- -- - -- -

"I don't know what you're expecting," Tom had told him with a bawdy laugh, a gulping drink of his ale.

He didn't know then either, a year before now, a year before when winter was coming, when it was freezing everything from crops to the old man they'd found dead cold in his bed at the Inn.

But he knew the smallfolk whispered of the ghost of Lyanna Stark, how they said the last Stark was seen making her way back to the ruins of Winterfell. The last daughter and child of the northern nobility since her favorite bastard brother was said to have the blood of the dragon, the King in the North long since crowned like his father had been by the Lannisters, the Lady High Sansa in their home, her brother that she cried over for how cruel it'd be for him to never be a knight the Lord of Winterfell now, a greenseer by fable, and her youngest brother as wild and untamable as the winter was proving to be, as she said all direwolves were. Or so he heard if the talk of the Starks was to be believed.

He just cared about the talk of her, he'd have known if she hadn't lived, he knew. He'd started to hear wolves howling something fierce in the nights following the whispers of Arya Stark returned. When they were howling during the hard days, too, he'd taken North, and "I don't know what you're expecting," Tom had told him with a bawdy laugh, a gulping drink of his ale. "I'll need a ballad about a scorned woman sung for you in the many moons to come."

But that wouldn't be the songs they'd sing of them. They just wouldn't sing of knights and ladies either, nor that damned featherbed. They'd sing something soft and powerful and desperate and _them_ , of the North, so he rode.

\- -- - -- -

"A bastard," Jon appraised when she wanted Gendry properly introduced to him. She just wanted to punch him now, but the way he'd said it wasn't condescending. He almost smiled, and that, _that_ was a sorely missed sight to behold.

"A smith," she corrected, and Gendry's cheeks were a different shade of red that wasn't from being burned by the cold.

"I am."

And Jon knew that, but being reminded of the man's worth wouldn't hurt when his first thought was to take Long Claw to his throat. "And?" He arched a dark brow, stoic, matching grey eyes staring at each other in perfected nonchalance.

"I love her, m'lord," Gendry blurted in sincerity, in stupidity. Arya slipped her fingers quietly into his so she wouldn't punch him with her free fist.

Lord Snow, they called him, didn't look surprised, but he didn't look happy either. Maybe he was seeing the past, the little girl with skinned knees and bruised elbows and always-messed hair clinging to his legs much to his not lady mother's disapproval, how  
sad it was that seasons changed, that they all had. Maybe he was thinking of the future that wasn't looking hopeful, but he nodded anyways, gesturing that they could leave. "Keep her safe," because this was still a war of the dead rising in numbers so great none of them had imagined the possibility. "Keep him safe," he then added quietly, remembering kings and crows, and Arya looked to him over her shoulder.

\- -- - -- -

The snows had been unforgiving this day, moons and moons ago.

He was lucky to slave in the forge, crafting the weapons with fire and steel, with his muscles that'd have to keep him and her alive. He was wary, but he'd always had that stubborn and determined set to his jaw.

It was that she touched with her fingers, her callused hand soft against his prickling beard, and gently, she'd guided his hand to set his smithing hammer on the anvil. "You've stopped breathing," she murmured. "You need to relax."

But when she guided that same hand to the curve of her rump, pressed her chest flush to his, she wasn't helping matters.

\- -- - -- -

"I don't care if you get hanged," she had said, just because she was mad enough.

What was he, seven and ten now? He shouldn't care so much about what a stupid little girl said or did, especially a meanly fierce tiny one with a sharp jaw and a sharper tongue and an eyeroll so expressive, it was nearly audible.

But he loved her in that childish, innocent way she spoke in all youthful wrath, a woman's scorn. Maybe it wasn't so innocent at all when she raised her chin, bit her fuller bottom lip in that habit she'd fallen into she really shouldn't have.

She'd make a hell of a woman one day, but not for him. Never for him.

Well. Maybe not, but that was foolish thinking, but he was a fool, anyways.

"You'd care alright. I'm the only friend you've got. _M'lady_."

When she punched him, he laughed until she looked like she'd stop being angry. There was something so startlingly, heartbreakingly sad in the way she looked away. Arya never looked away.

"I don't care," she repeated, but her voice always betrayed her.

"Arya," he said. He'd scarcely ever used her given, proper name, and her eyes had flashed to his before she'd taken off.

She was already gone when he had changed his mind about leaving, though.

\- -- - -- -

If at all possible, King Stannis Baratheon looked even more unimpressed than usual.

"My brother's bastard," he had said when the new smith had shown up to aid the Night's Watch against winter. "He has the look of him when he was younger."

"You're sure?" It was the first time Jon had paid any attention to the man. He was silent enough. Got along well with the other men. Lady Brienne seemed to recognize him, and her one good cheek had burned as she stood awkwardly like the new colt born days  
before, like she was unsure whether to kneel or clasp him into her arms or even look at him. He'd been called away before he heard the words they'd exchanged.

"I am," Stannis scowled. That was the end of that.

But that was the start of noticing the smith always seemed to disappear when Arya had.

\- -- - -- -

"Here," he offered, gruff.

She snapped her (his) eyes to his like it was a trick. Impatiently, he shook the poor excuse of a blanket he held out to her (him), and she (he) mumbled thanks. She scrambled over to get it, quick and feisty like he might snatch it away at the last instant, but he didn't, and she (he) could almost wrap her (his) nine year old self twice over in the blanket.

She, Arya, would be warm tonight at least. Arry had long days and nights ahead. The ground was starting to feel harder like it was frozen.

\- -- - -- -

He stared at her, and she stared back, unflinching.

There were lines around his eyes, laughlines she called them once, and while that made him laugh, the marks were born of stress and hardship. Just like hers. His eyes hardened the longer he glowered at her. Stronger men and women would have crumbled  
under his stare, but not her. Never her.

"You're not going," he repeated like he had. Her arms crossed over her chest when he crossed his.

"You don't decide that."

"Yes, I bloody do."

"No," she said, gritting her teeth. "What else am I supposed to do?"

 _The Night's Watch doesn't take girls_ , he'd told her once, but things changed.

"You're supposed to stay in Castle Black. Go back to Winterfell. Anything, just not venture beyond the Wall with a party and fucking fight, Arya! What if something happened to you?"

"I'd kill as many as I could," she answered simply. _Oathkeeper_ glimmered at her hip, but she kept calling the sword _Ice_.

"They can't kill you," he whispered finally, turning his eyes to the floor. "I could probably live without you, Arya, I've done it before, but I don't want to again. Not now that you're my wife. Even Jon doesn't want you out there. More and more men come back charred."

"Maybe all they need is a woman." She tried to smile, but he shook his head, opened his arms out to her. She fell into them.

"If you go, I go."

"Gendry."

"I mean it," he swore.

If she goes, he goes. He meant it.

\- -- - -- -

"That right there," Sam told him brightly, pointing to a letter in a book. It was a peaceful moment, a quiet moment, and they'd all actually seen the sun for the first time in what seemed like weeks. A candle flickered and winked at them from the table, and Sam was _patient_. Understanding. "That's the letter _G_."

Arya rolled her eyes when Gendry muttered something about how good a teacher the maester was, but she kept the piece of parchment he'd sloppily scrawled his name on. Her name. Followed by the surname of Waters, since after hearing of his lineage, he'd rather remain a bastard, and she said she'd rather remain his.

\- -- - -- -

She laid him onto her cloak, warm and frozen against the bitter snow.

"Gendry," she whispered. If she cried, her tears would likely freeze on her cheeks.

She'd already called for help, but her round of the horn had been replaced by a mantra of three blows loud in the silence around them. More of the dead coming, and his breaths were getting more and more shallow. More pained.

"Someone's coming to help," she told him, but he didn't have the strength to open his eyes to see her, his hand feeling limp in her bare one. Her gloves were pressed to the gaping hole in his chest where his skin had been shorn and severed by a frozen man that wasn't breathing, and she pressed and pressed, willed the blood staining the snow to disappear, to leave him with his life.

"Arya," he whispered, and when she saw his eyes so blue against his pale skin, she prayed that when he opened them next, they wouldn't be a brighter, deader blue.

"Someone's coming to help," she repeated more fiercely when it felt like he was slipping away. "Someone's coming," a broken repetition, and she breathed into his skin, his hair, his neck. "Stay, Gendry, you can't leave me. Don't you dare die on me, you hear? Someone's coming."

\- -- - -- -

"Why?" he had asked her.

"It's not to take his oath," the Kingslayer, Jaime, had laughed. Brienne scowled at his amused, cocky grin and arched brow. "Well, certainly not. Whole damned Castle knows that much."

He didn't bother to tell him that he'd never taken no vows neither, and all the whole damned Castle knew that about him and Brienne.

"Don't ask why," Arya said, frowning impatiently at him. "There's a hearttree not too far from the gate. We're going with Jon," and he didn't think to ask anymore questions when her hand found his knee beneath the table.

A brisk, frozen ride north, he's saying his vows to her as they kneel in front of the old, wisened tree, and the wind howls, a raven quorks, there might be the return of a dragon from King's Landing with all the noise there is.

"I love you," she'd told him for the first time, reaching for his hand after swearing those words of love and protection that melted his heart, that could have thawed the winter. He started undoing the clasp of his cloak to place around her shoulders, but she laughed, called him stupid, told him that he'd freeze.

"I love you," like he'd been saying it for years, and when he laughed, Jon rolled his eyes at them, brooding until he smiled.

"Congratulations." _You both deserve all the happiness left in the world._

\- -- - -- -

"Finish early?" she sneered at him. She was still sitting outside the Peach, scuffing her heels into the ground, wiping furiously at one eye.

He was just sorry. "I didn't do more than drink."

"Drinking turns you into a fool."

"Aye," he said slowly, handing her his mug before he could think better of it. "It does." She took it; he couldn't be surprised when she gulped and gulped it down, could he? Not a proper lady, but the best one. "I'm sorry. For what I said."

"Doesn't matter," but that means it always does with her.

"I didn't mean anything by it. You just make me so mad at times."

"You make me madder," she sniped, sounding watery. She had his heartstrings pulled taut.

"Come on," he said, elbowing her side gently. He looked upwards to the heavens, where the gods really ought to have mercy on him just once, and she took his hand when he offered it. The only time she'd ever said so. "Let's go to sleep."

\- -- - -- -

"You're so stupid," she cursed him.

"I know," he whispered, his breaths still slow.

 _I thought you were going to die_ , but she doesn't say it, just lets him hold her hands to his chest over his heart, over all those bandages he was scarred beneath. _You said you'd never leave me again, and you almost did_ , but she doesn't say that either.

"I know," he says again, sounding softer at the thoughts he can see in her face, and his eyes look just as red as hers feel.

"You're alive."

"I am, Arya."

"You're so stupid."

She's crying now, her fingers needy and painful where they're gripping his, and he painstakingly shifts on the small cot, lets her curl into him like she always does, her knees drawn up and fit between his legs, her arms against his chest, his around her.

"I am," he agrees, feeling her tears hot against his skin. "I am. But we're alright, darling," he whispers. "We're alright."

\- -- - -- -

She's at Castle Black just like the whispers said she would be.

Not really a surprise, really, Sansa had gone to Castle Black first with Lady Brienne and Ser Jaime. So had Bran and then Rickon when fate brought them all back together like Bran said the direwolves would all come back.

He's not _looking_ for her, but he can't help but catch sight of one of the only three women in the castle. It's her after all these years, and when their eyes flash in a chance reunion across the practice yard, she looks at him like he's no one. Like she's no one.

But then recognition dawns on her like the last time the sun rose one morning, and she smiles until she scowls, frowns at him in all the scorn and hatred he'd expected, but she's alive. And she's here.

And she's standing before him now, almost to his shoulders, and they don't even need a song. It doesn't matter that it's winter. It's like there's been no time apart even as it feels like there has been, something contrite and _them_ bringing them here beyond everything. At the end of everything, the start of something else. She's looking up to him while he's forgetting to breathe, and they're just Arry and Gendry again. They made it to the Wall after all.

At least until she punches his jaw hard and he embarrassingly hits the ground with her foot at his neck, her eyes wide and angry. "Why're you here?" she demands, but she says it like his being anywhere else is unthinkable, like he'd only gone off for firewood instead of spent six years away.

"Don't know," he says, a lie, and she lets him up just so she can hug him quickly.

"Stupid," she mutters, but not for the first or last time before she walks off.


End file.
